Adobe has asked Photoshop product manager John Nack to help build a new breed of Adobe imaging applications for tablet computers. And yes, that includes the Apple iPad.
Nack will do so knowing that the Jobsian software police may not allow his applications into its App Store - even though the dead-simple Adobe Ideas "digital …

What have Adobe given to the open source community?

>Did they [Apple] create a parallel processing engine and then give it away?

Who would pay for OpenCL? Its incomplete and barely documented - if anything it underlines his point - and of course if Nvidia took the same line as Apple in their T&C you wouldn't be able to use it anyway.

Can you say antitrust (or anti competitive) probe

If Apple was to bar Lightroom but allow Aperture on the iPad it would be so ripe for an Antitrust / Anticompetitive probe.

I can appreciate Apple wanting to protect it's revenue channels but sooner than later the ball is going to drop. Apple will by now have learned from the likes of Microsoft on how to deal with such a situation. In other words, forcefully deny, back up with strong legal team to fight it, make concessions but stall and implement only half heartedly while continuing to protect revenue channels. These are some business fundamentals they don't necessarily teach you in business school.

comprehension failure

Can't be antitrust, as Apple aren't a monopoly (did you *really* talk about business fundamentals while not realising this?). The iPad is not a general purpose computer in the traditional sense, see PS2/3 and XBox for the real precedents.

No, no it wouldn't

You confuse being intensely competitive with being anti-competitive

Your Microsoft analogy is wrong. Microsoft got into trouble for forcing other PC manufacturers to install or not install certain competing software lest they lose the right to sell Windows and thereby go out of business. Microsoft controlled other companies' products and emerging software categories like browsers using its monopoly on PC operating systems.

What Adobe is saying here is that they're not sure if Apple will sell Adobe's product in Apple's store. They're not saying that Apple is controlling Adobe, just that they don't want to do business with them. And Apple does not have a monopoly on smartphones or tablets, so Adobe is free to go elsewhere.

The government should not be able to force Apple to sell anything they don't want to sell. If Apple doesn't want to sell Lightroom on the iPad (a hypothetical), Adobe should go and try selling it on Android or Windows Tablets which would make these products more popular versus the iPad. That's how a free market works.

FUD

No, it's not.

Listen, I abhor adobe. Acrobat and Photoshop's terrible design has required users run as administrator on my windows systems. It has means that using Photoshop under multiple users can cause profile corruption, and it stores gigabytes of temp files in places that get replicated off to the server when using roaming profiles. IF for no other reasons than these, Adobe can die screaming.

THAT SAID...Adobe have some exceptionally good and very valid points. Apple is up-and-coming; they’re Unix based, which means a real command line with some honest-to-god power behind it. (Seriously, powershell? DIAF.) With the advent of Steam For Mac, you can begin to actually game on a Mac! Since Macs started to pick up in popularity in the US, developers are starting to code for it…there’s a chance it may one day pass from being a Fisher-Price computer that runs a bunch of pretty (but ultimately useless) pre-loaded apps into a real computer platform that can run any of millions of applications for any conceivable purpose.

The problem is that to pass from the realm of Fisher-Price computing into the grow-up world the platform needs to be “open.” (Seriously, we need a better word than “open.”) I’ll define open: open is anyone being able to write anything for that “platform” using any language they know how, attaching any hardware they can code drivers for FOR ANY PURPOSE. Anything else is an attempt to impose your own moral judgements on others, and is nothing more than an expensive but restricted child’s toy.

In this failing, Apple aren’t remotely alone. I’ll gladly take the piss out of almost anyone on this. Apple act as “moral police” and “experience purity” police whilst trying desperately to use their success in one area to cement dominance in another. (If they had 75%+ of the market, this would be consider monopolistic behaviour, no questions asked. As it is it’s simply irritating and disqualifies them as a serious consideration for business computing. It also disqualifies them from my personal consideration for home computing.)

Microsoft and Oracle have ridiculous policies of “you can only use our software in combination with our other software.” You’ll never get an official licence from MS to run office on Linux, despite the fact that everything except Outlook runs great under wine. You aren’t allowed to use Office Floaty Cloud Edition from a browser in Linux, and for that matter you technically aren’t legally allowed to RDP into a windows computer from a Linux system.

If you want an example of the mainframe childishness, just watch IBM get their panties in a bunch when someone tries to run their O/S on hardware they didn’t lock you in to. If HP had an ounce of caring about the good of their customers, they’d have ported htier O/Ses off of the Itanic ages ago, and be helping their customers access a range of new hardware options that aren’t technological dead ends.

Linux distributions (and most Linux nerds) are perhaps the worst of the lot. They recognise all of the above, and so back an open source set of alternatives on one hand, while running holy jihads against the use of anything “closed” on their precious OS on the other. The irony is completely lost on them. The important part isn’t if the source is open or not, but what you can DO with the computer that is in front of you. What control do you have over you own software or hardware? If I write a closed-source driver for my New Widget, this isn’t a bad thing. It’s not as good as if I open sourced that driver, but without some form of driver you can’t use the New Widget, so I have at least opened up some form of Choice to you. As the provider of the New Widget, I may have my reasons for not open sourcing my code, but so long as I don’t unfairly restrict what my New Widget can interact with, there’s nothing to get uppity about. If Adobe finally wrote Photoshop For Linux, yet did it as a closed source application, again this WOULDN’T BE A BAD THING. I wouldn’t be AS GOOD as if it were released open source, but the mere fact that this existed for this platform has increased the choices available. There are a stupendous number in the Linux community completely unable to think like that, and they seem to spend the majority of their time fighting holy Jihads against those that do. Thus Linux stagnates and for every three steps forward it takes, it takes two steps back.

So where does this really leave me, as a business user or as an Individual? Anything running on Apple is only allowed to run at the whims of a megalomaniac, whims which are subject to change if he sees a competitive or PR advantage to be had. Microsoft/Oracle and similar will spend eternity sucking you into their “ecosystem.” Once there you learn that everything you own must be made by them or, while it may technically function, they hang the threat of litigation of the heads of everyone. The Mainframe world is similar, with the additional bonus that you are hardware locked as well as software locked. Oh, and FLOP per FLOP, it’s significantly more expensive than just about any other options, barring perhaps trying to build a super out of iPhones. Linux? A bunch of infighting children who can’t play nice amongst themselves, let alone the rest of the world.

The closest I have been able to find tolerable amongst the lot of them is Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It’s still Linux, so there’s still a lot of cursing, things not working, and running up against ridiculous moral Puritanism when trying to do just about anything…but at least I can code whatever I want for it, and Red Hat does long-term maintenance on the distro. (As opposed to the spasmodic offerings of Ubuntu or Fedora, where you are flat out better off nuking and re-installing, and then learning how /everything/ works all over again with each new revision.)

It’s ALL pants. All of it. Apple isn’t in the right, Adobe isn’t in the right, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, even Linux....PANTS, ALL OF IT.

So I level at the entirety of the software industry the very same comment I level at ISPs:

@Trevor Pott o_O

Was with you 100% until your anti-linux argument.

I don't want ibm, ms, apple, adobe, or anybody making decisions about what I can do with my hardware/software. Just put it out there, give it a price, and let me get my work done without some third party telling me how I must do it. All of them are guilty of this to various degrees, but not the linux distros.

I entirely understand that "open source" is not the most important factor for most users, but even without that benefit, most open source software still offers far more favorable end user terms.

With linux, individuals or businesses can use the OS/code however they please internally. The only restrictions apply when an entity starts distributing derivative code. Even then, many open source project owners are willing to sell the code under a separate commercial license. I hope, in retrospect, that you'll recognize this dual licensing approach as more flexible than a commercial only license.

Also you mentioned that you don't care whether a driver is open or not, however is seems you've overlooked the point that a closed driver is not portable. It may prohibit us from running the OS & hardware we want to, and from upgrading in the future. Take this real scenario: I have a set of universal power supplies which only comes with 32 bit x86 drivers, I cannot interface to them from my embeded PPC machines because the manufacturer won't bother compiling drivers for PPC architecture, and does not release source code allowing the user to do so.

With that in mind, open source means that even users who don't use the source code will still benefit from the availability of more choices.

@Trevor Pott o_O

The "Fisher Price" Mac is already open. Always has been, always will be. It already has virtually limitless software avaialble and can be used for pretty much any imaginable purpose (or at least programmed to do anything you can't already find software for). If you knew the first thing about these "Fisher Price" computers rather than making a lot of misguided assumptions about something from outside your narrow view of the world, you'd know this.

@Tim Cook.

I spent a good long while pondering if I should respond to you or not. Though I understand that trying to talk to fanboys of any stripe is often pointless (they are blind to criticism of their favorite device,) I felt that I should clear my name. To others who might read this, if not nesses airily to you.

You make the statement that I don’t know the first thing about Macs, and that my opinion is based on my “narrow view of the world.” To the first; I do actually know a fair amount about Macs. Not as much as I know about PCs or Linux boxes, I admit...but I must work with and administrate Macs every day. I even, (shock, gasp,) have a pair of the little buggers at home. (Yes, they are the girlfriend’s, but I do use and abuse them a lot myself. Knowledge is best obtained first hand, and I like to know what is I speak of when I shoot my mouth off on-line.)

As to the second, I can’t dispute that my opinions come from my narrow view of the world. From where else would my opinions come excepting my own personal experience? The marking handed to me from a multi-billion dollar company? No, my opinions are formed based on having to work with these systems day in and day out.

Mac’s play nice only with other Macs. I am certain that with enough browbeating, you can convince a Mac to work on (for example) an Active Directory network. I know because I have done it, however I have also discovered that there is less pain involved in convincing a Fedora-based system to run Mac applications, and join in the MS-network fun than there is in trying to coax that Mac into playing well with others. While I will grant you that Mac desktop and laptop computers running FIULE BORE MAC OSX are reasonably open, (there are several very annoying limitations in what I can code and using what tools,) anything running iPhoneOS is a closed platform behind a walled garden locked on a planet with it’s own shield. (Pay the toll, and be approved by the triumvirate before being allowed through the shield.)

In truth, Mac OSX (as opposed to iPhoneOS) is almost as open as Windows. I can still do more with Windows; code more things with fewer restrictions, run a greater variety of Apps. Like the Windows ecosystem, Apple locks their devices to their platform, their platform plays with their things only and any pittance of mixed-environment compatibility is offer with a desultory wave of the hand and an air of reluctance. Apple has learned it’s lessons from Microsoft well.

Linux is the only truly “open” system to code for, but it has it’s own problems. The Jihadi mentality of so many policy-setters and major-project-coders leads to fragmentation, inconsistent application behavior across even minor version changes as well as alarming differences in capability and level of bugs between similar-generation distros. The Jihadi attitude of the Linux world also makes most companies very twitchy about playing in that sandbox because they are unsure they can make money. This means that despite the advances in a lot places in Linux, (and for the fanboys, I use three different distros of Linux every day as well,) Linux is still marred by patchy application support, buggy drivers and a completely inconsistent “user experience”. (Even between version of the same distro.)

So, to Tim Cook; Mac is a walled garden sir. It’s iPhoneOS products more than others, but even the desktop world of Mac is hidden behind a veil. Microsoft is as well, however the difference is that Microsoft’s walled garden is ****ing enormous. They have at least one of everything you can possibly imagine, so you can live, work and play inside that walled garden and never have a requirement to leave it. Linux is a wide open field; populated by anarchists living in anything from castles to lean-tos, all of whom have overlapping territorial claims, and none of whom look kindly on outsiders.

For a home PC, especially for someone who wants nothing more than the experience provided them by OSX, Macs are ****ing fantastic. They are a fantastic home computing APPLIANCE, and just like iPhoneOS devices, have their niche well carved out. In a business environment, one that has to integrate with other operating systems, Macs are a burden, not a benefit.

I am open to being proven wrong, but as with so many people, I won’t believe something just because I’ve read it online. If someone wants to prove me wrong in person, show me definitively and conclusively that Macs are as “open” as the competition, prove they can and will integrate into a mixed business environment…

…well if you can do that, I’ll write the glowing article of praise and post it on EL Reg myself. Until that day however...I’ll continue to take the piss out of ALL platforms, for ALL of their failings.

@AC 15:45

I am aware that the settings change solves this, but when deploying Photoshop via network-installer to a few hundred computers, I am aware of no way to change this setting via script or pre-coded install option.

If you could enlighten me as to such, then I would be eternally grateful...

@Tim Cook

Wrong. In order to sell a commercially-developed application for OSX, your program must pass an Apple inspection to ensure your GUI is inline with their GUI standards (for one). If it fails, you can't sell it with their stamp of approval.

HIG?

are you referring to the Apple Human Interface Guidelines? If so, what OS/GUI doesn't have one? Microsoft certainly does: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa511258.aspx . So does Gnome: http://library.gnome.org/devel/hig-book/stable/ . I'm guessing KDE project hasn't got round to one yet judging by the last time I saw it ;-)

There is no compulsion to follow these guidelines. I can (and do) run run a huge amount of GUI and shell applications that are not native to OSX. I also run applications developed for OSX which have some pretty 'funky' interfaces, both free and commercial.

Either I've misunderstood what you were getting at or you are talking complete nonsense.

@Trevor Pott o_O

Firstly, thanks for pigeonholing me as a fanboy, and confirming the particular narrowness of your personal view of the world. Secondly, thanks for conceding the only other point I was making - Macs are basically as open as any other platform, with the possible exception of Linux, which is largely unusable for all manner of other reasons.

@Ammaross Danan

You claim that you can't sell commercial software for OSX without passing an Apple inspection, but then say you can't sell it with their "stamp of approval" if it fails - so which is it? Clearly one is quite different to the other.

I put it to you that its perfectly possible to sell commercial software for OSX without any contact with Apple, and many people do just that. Ergo, it's an open platform.

@Tim Cook

You may believe what you wish about the narrowness of my viewpoint; I am merely cynical. Apple does what is good for Apple, nothing more, nothing less. Those who "believe" in a company, any company, are "fanboys." Corporations exist to make money; they have no ethics, no morals, and no scruples. They are bound by law to do everything legally possible to "increase shareholder value," and as such devotion to any company borders on the insane. Corporations are not on the side of the consumers. Corporations may accidentally provide something of substantial value to a consumer, but only if there is enough competition to cause them to do so.

As to Apple being “as open” as any other platform, IT IS NOT. One aspect of Apple’s empire, specifically their “full blown” OSX is more-or-less as open as other proprietary operating systems. It isn’t close to as open as Linux, and frankly I’d absolutely love to see a breakdown of “openness” between Microsoft and Apple. I have a sneaky suspicion that even on the desktop, Microsoft would win.

You also completely ignore the fact that a company like Microsoft can get away with being closed because they offer a wide enough variety of software and hardware within their “ecosystem” that, in truth, you only very rarely have to venture outside of it.

You can call me narrow-minded all you wish, but I stand by what I said. Apple produce Fisher-Price computer systems. They make computing APPLIANCES that are designed for CONSUMERS. If I want a push-button HTPC, or a dumb web terminal, I would certainly consider a Mac. It has to one job, and do that one job well. In this appliance world Apple not only proves it’s mettle, it utterly demolishes it’s competition.

Apple need to stop fighting the battle of “open.” It’s a crock. They aren’t open. You can jiggle the figures, and try to change the definition of open to suit the claim, but the reality of it is Apple have no interest in “open” because it doesn’t make them a red cent.

What I fail to understand is why they seem to think they have to market themselves as open. If Apple went out, marketed themselves as “hey, we have a closed, walled garden computing experience...but it is exactly this sort of tight integration, vetting, and general control freakery that mean that we can guarantee you the best computing experience for [category X]” then I wouldn’t have a beef with Apple. They would be fessing up to what they are: an appliance and consumer electronics maker, and they would make a ****ing killing.

This game with Adobe, (or anyone else) of who is “open” is complete and utter bollocks. If you are proud of Apple, if you think Apple is the best, then don’t try lying about who and what they are. Stand up for their walled garden, and defend that approach. I may personally not like the approach, but IT HAS PROVEN IT’S VALUE. The current genitalia-measuring contest over “openness’ does nothing by make Apple look like the worst kind of hypocrite.

@Trevor Pott o_O

Take a breath, and try to understand these basic truths:

1. At no point have I suggested that Apple are acting on anyone other than Apple's behalf, or indeed said anything whatsoever about Apple as a company. I'd never imagine that you care about my opinion of Apple as a company, any more than I care about yours. You have absolutely nothing on which to base your definition of me as an unthinking fanboy or slavish supporter of Apple, it's simply a crutch for your own prejudice.

2. Mac OS X is an open platform by the only definition that makes any kind of sense in this context - it's open to anyone to develop software for it that can be run on any Mac, without Apple's permission or blessing. Macs can also communicate with other non-Macs and non-Apple peripheraby way of open standards such as web, wifi, bluetooth, USB etc. Mac hardware can even (and easily) be made to run other non-Mac operating systems such as Windows or Linux. In short, a Mac is no more tied down to Apple (or any other corporation) than any other computer you can buy or even build yourself.

3. Your concept of "open" makes no sense. If both Mac and Windows OS are "walled gardens" by your definition then so too is every flavour of Linux and literally every other OS that ever walked the earth, making your specific attack on the Mac even more misguided than it already was.

@Tim Cook

Your belief that I was "spitefully attacking" Macs betrays your own bias, sir. I was non-spitefully attacking all extant platforms. There is no malice or spitefulness...merely an acknowledgement that absolutely nothing out there is truly "open." My attack is against anyone or any corporation that would attempt to call themselves "open." You say that you have the right define open. I am here to call you on that. My opinion of the definition of the word "open" is just as valid as your own, and mind would require more from Apple, Microsoft or even Linux before I considered them open. (Thou8gh admittedly the open source community is the closest of you all…and not because they open source their code. Also since quite a bit of open source software is not free for commercial use, one cannot infer that it is price that makes something open in my opinion either.)

Openness is not only being allowed to run whatever code you want, it is the ability to interoperate with other systems. It is adherence to every international standard that applies to your product. If you are an office suite, you should support ODF, OpenXML, and every and any other "open standard" that isn't encumbered with patents or liabilities. At that point do I start to consider that office package "open."

For an operating system, the stakes are higher. An OS like OSX is far more than a kernel and a windowing platform. You include all sorts of built-in applications, from Safari to multimedia programs to widgets and partition management apps. Can I run every file format in Apple's native multimedia playback apps that VLC can run? No? Why not? I accept "because they are covered in 10,000 patents." I don't accept "because we want people to use formats we have patents on." Are you even capable of understanding the difference? Other than FAT, is there a truly cross-platform file-system? Why, in the year 2010, can I not manage a Macintosh through Active Directory? (Or OpenLDAP, or...)

Apple is a multi-billion-dollar company. It has resources that I myself personally, or even most enterprises on the planet don't have. There are technologies you could, and should be incorporating into your Macs to make them more “open”, rather than getting into hypocritical word wars with Adobe.

Sit down at the table with Microsoft, and hammer out some deals to make your Macs more interoperable, easier managed by (let’s face it) the dominant enterprise server player out there, and maybe climb down from the ivory tower and work with the Linux folk to interoperate with them.

“Open” isn’t whatever you say it is. “Open” is the ability to not only run what I want, when I want, in whatever language I want, but it is the ability to interoperate with everything and anything I happen to bring along. I’m a reasonable guy; I don’t expect your Macs to interoperate with my 15-year-old clock radio, or my obscure $5 MP3 player. I do expect it to work with every single industry standard and every dominant chunk of software and hardware out there. I expect it to do this out of the box ONLY because you carry on about being “open.”

If you simply said “Apple is walled garden; we play with only with other Apple gear and certified Apple software,” then there wouldn’t be a single problem here. Quit telling the world you make “open” computers, and instead stand up for the fact that you make the best computing APPLIANCES currently available. You’d be admitting what you are, and there’d be truth in advertising.

Now before you try to nail me down once more for having a “closed mind’ or a “narrow viewpoint,” I want you to bear in mind that I am not attacking Apple’s business model, merely your advertising and “message.” Microsoft is just as “closed,” as Apple…they just don’t lie about it nearly as often. (When they do, I take the piss out of them just as hard.) Linux is a community for which I have all sorts of scorn for mouthing “open” out one side of their mouths while telling you “our way or the hiway” out the other.

I understand that from a business and even legal perspective it is really convenient to define being “open” as totally separate from being “interoperable” and offering support for “as many standards as is legally possible.” I am here to call you on that, sir.

As a consumer, as a programmer, as a systems administrator, as a company executive, as a vendor of IT services, as a reseller of IT hardware and as a writer for a tech magazine I am here to tell you that “open” is not something to be redefined according to the needs of a given company’s marketing department. “Open” means not only “the freedom to run whatever I want, whenever I want, in whatever language I want,” it means “interoperability,” and it most certainly and above all else means “support for every international standard that it is legally possible to support.”

If you want to call that a narrow viewpoint, that is your right. Understand however that your defence of your definition of the word “open” looks terribly narrow, (and hypocritical) to me. If you truly believe in your company sir, defend what they are, not what you would have them be. Apple isn’t open.

But they make some decent closed computing appliances.

P.S. This applies to iPhoneOS as much as it does to “full fat OSX.” Get into no wars crowing about your “openness” until you’ve solved that one.

Oh dear

Let's try and build some understanding here. I AM NOT APPLE. I don't work for Apple. Apple are not MY company, I have no more connection with them than you do. When I say Macs are open, it's *me* saying that, not Apple - me being a simple bystander with experience of various computers over the years and an opinion, just like you.

You seem to want to rail at "the man" over this. Unfortunately "the man" isn't here, just a bunch of people just like you with opinions. That's how comments usually work.

I maintain that your definition of "openness" is nonsensical. On the one hand you claim as proof of Apple's closed nature that its own in-built software in OS X doesn't support as many standards as VLC. Yet on the other hand, as you've admitted, VLC exists! Without any involvement by Apple, someone has come along and bestowed the Mac platform with support for a whole pile of other "non-Apple" standards. If the Mac was a "closed" platform by any definition, then that simply wouldn't be possible.

I don't agree that "open" means "does absolutely everything out of the box" as you seem to be suggesting. For me, "open" means its open to any possibility, and that's what the Mac (as opposed to the iPhone or the iPad for instance) definitely is.

@Tim Cook

First, it doesn't matter if you're Apple or not. You stood up to defend them, it's simpler to address you as though you did work for them. (Who knows, maybe, just maybe someone involved with Apple actually reads these comments.)

Second, just as you reject my definition of “open,” I reject yours. Your definition of open holds true in a world where all things are equal. All things are not equal; a company the size of Apple holds enormous influence. What they choose to include (or far more importantly, what they choose to EXCLUDE) “out of the box” goes a very, very long way towards defining what is “standard” and what is not. Apple choose to include only standards and formats and interconnectivity they hold patents on (and thus make money on,) while explicitly excluding those they don’t. When Microsoft does this, the world screams “anti-trust,” and frankly Apple’s time has come. Their consumer computing appliances have reached lofty enough heights that the exclusion of something by Apple has very similar effects to it’s exclusion by Microsoft.

An example would be FAT. If Windows were to support the ext family of filesystems out of the box, (as would befit an “open” operating system by my definition,) no one would eb using FAT for flash drives or anything else. There would be a completely cross-platform, patent unencumbered file system available for removable media. I can download an ext* driver for windows however it’s exclusion from out-of-the-box Windows means that despite the /possibility/ of it being installed, it will never see broad adoption.

Apple’s attack on Flash, VP8 and others in favour of H.264 is having a very similar effect. Just like Microsoft owning patents on FAT, Apple own patents on H.264.

In the entire history of computers, about the only application I can recall bucking this trend is Flash. (Java is a close second.) Despite it’s lack of inclusion in most operating systems, it was so very required at the beginning of the aughties that it reached ubiquity.

It is because of these social effects that I say that “the possibility that you can do something with a system” is not enough to be open. To be open you have to embrace open standards…even the ones that don’t directly make you money. Otherwise you are using your influence in one area to increase your dominance in another. I equate “open” with the idea of competition. Competition to me means that you compete on technology, features and convenience. Those ideas are anathema to the practice of lock-ins, exclusion and using one’s influence built in area A to crush competition in area B.

You are free to disagree with me; in fact agreeing to disagree is likely the only sane thing to do at this point. Still, nothing is likely to change my belief that individuals, corporations or even governments that have expanded influence compared to their peers absolutely must be held to higher standards. This includes “openness” by my definition, and it most certainly includes truth in advertising.

Since you and I can not agree on the definition of open in this context, two commenters in a thread long since dead, what hope a nation or any large group of consumers believing in the same definition? When a word has been and twisted, stretched and changed it’s meaning becomes so ambiguous that it is without meaning. “Open” has become a word that means whatever a marketing department wants it to mean. Very few people are using it to mean what I believe it should mean, few of them are even using it to mean what you claim it should mean. So when I slam Apple, or Microsoft or anyone else for claims of being “open,” it is not only because they do not meet my definition of open…

…but that it may be impossible to achieve a definition that a majority of people can agree upon.

Spot on, my friend

Here we have proof positive that Jobs is scaring developers away from the iPhone/iPad. How can software companies go to their investors and ask for $1m to write a major app, when once the project is finished and the money spent, there's a massive roadblock entitled "get approved by the App store".

It's crazy, crazy, crazy. Devs may be very happy to use Objective-C and follow "the rules" now but how can they know what the rules will be 12 months on? They change so unpredictably.

All we'll be left with is boob-wobbling apps written by students, who make a few hundred quid before they're "policed".

Think about it, Steve: why was MS-DOS, bane of the 80's, so incredibly successful?

Good

If you don't like it....

Anti trust.... why on earth would there be anti-trust involved? It's not like the world is dependent on iPhones and iPads now is it. If you don't like the product, don't buy it. Google is flogging phones which run flash, no? (er, strike that one...)

Apple has great customer support, and I am sure they're really happy about NOT getting billions of calls about short battery lifetimes because of some proprietary application draining the device in an hour or so.

Also, remind me again about the contributions to software engineering made by Adobe.

Farther or Further???

Paragraph nine. How many miles or Kilometers is Jobs willing to go? ;)

Anyhow, Lightroom, as long as there's some sort of 30-pin iPad connector to a camera via USB, since the iPad doesn't have a camera, would be kind of cool in remote shooting to review pictures without carrying a laptop. An iPad might actually fit into a camera case, but the memory constraints of 16/32/64 MB really don't allow for much image adjustment or for saving files to the iPad itself.

But a Lightroom Light (sic) might get me interested in a tablet of some sorts, but a memory card slot would be helpful as well.

@No Camera on iPad...

Slow day in the office?

"Nack will do so knowing that the Jobsian software police may not allow his applications into its App Store"

Oh please. All the Apple vs. Adobe drama is a bit tiresome. They (Apple) wouldn't be sending emailers for CS5 if they gave two shits about the Flash spat.

I thought people posting "Adobe will abandon Mac development!" crap in forums and blogs was stupid enough - when a mature IT site like Reg gets involved... you guys been bought out by Gawker or something?

Don't Cry for me Adobe(tina)

Damn, you want a business promise from a company that you've screwed with, big time? Fix Mac Flash - Flash has sucked on the Mac OS X for at least 5 years now.

Grow up Adobe. We know you can play hard ball, but not when it's your ball(s).

Also, Apple's too smart to keep your creation off the iTunes store; Apple wants Adobe's good products as much as Adobe wants Apple's platform cash. (And you do know how to set your (monopolistic?) pricing, don't you?)